House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Rufus Rodriguez on Friday appealed to vaccination czar Carlito Galvez Jr. and Health Secretary Francisco Duque lll to send AstraZeneca vaccines to other regional and LGU hospitals and private referral hospitals for their health workers.
“We thank Secretaries Galvez and Duque for sending vaccines to the Northern Mindanao Medical Center in Cagayan de Oro City. However other regional hospitals, LGU hospitals like the J.R. Borja Memorial Hospital in Cagayan de Oro, and private referral hospitals in the country also need the vaccines for their doctors, nurses and other personnel,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez represents Cagayan de Oro city’s second district.
“These personnel are exposed also to Covid-19. The other regional, LGU and referral hospitals are also fighting the highly infectious novel coronavirus and its mutations. There should be equity in the distribution of the vaccine,” he said.
Rodriguez said there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Covid-19 cases in Northern Mindanao, in the Samar-Leyte provinces, in Bicol, Southern Tagalog, and central and northern Luzon like in Baguio City and Mountain Province, where the government had to contain the spread of the more contagious UK variant. He said other health facilities should also be allocated vaccines.
Rodriguez stressed that doses allotted to hospital personnel who refuse to be inoculated and opt to wait for other vaccines should be given to health workers willing to take them, and they are in the other regions of the country.